Narcissists can and do love, but their love tends to be superficial and fleeting. They can develop intense emotional attachments—even appearing to "fall in love"—and yet still maintain a complete lack of empathy for the object of their affection.
Narcissistic personality disorder (narcissism) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by a pattern of self-importance (grandiosity), a constant need for admiration and attention, and a lack of empathy for others. Because of this lack of empathy, a narcissist cannot really love you.
They may be telling you that they love you because they so desperately want you to love them. This is a part of the love bombing stage of the narcissistic relationship. They want you to feel valued, idealized, and perfect for them so that you will feel the same way about them.
This is the key to both personalities: the need to be admired by others. Narcissists believe they should be adored because of their expertise, superiority, beauty, intelligence, or accomplishments.
Narcissists are attracted to certain types of people. Rather than weak, vulnerable people, they tend to go for the strong-willed and talented. They are also attracted to people who reflect well on themselves.
Truth 1: Narcissists fall in love with their fantasy of you.
They fall in love with their projections of whomever they currently idealize as the perfect mate. They can sound convincingly in love, but that is because they temporarily believe in the fantasy version of you created in their mind.
They won't change. You may think that when a narcissist truly falls in love, they change for the better. Unfortunately, in most situations, that is not the case. And because of that, they tend to turn abusive or remain self-absorbed.
Narcissists may show you love and act in loving ways, but this tends to be conditional, in that displays of love depend on what you can give them in return. For people with NPD, relationships tend to be transactional. Love is not self-serving, proud, boastful, exploitative, or envious.
In fact, the love language of the narcissist is to get you to do all the work of the relationship. They feel “loved” when you are proving your love and loyalty. They believe you are invested into the relationship when you invest more into them than you invest in you.
One effective way that a narcissist can draw someone back into their realm is to say, “I love you.” If you're especially important to a narcissist, they'll say and do just about anything to get you back, including using those powerful three words.
People who are impressive in some way, either in their career, hobbies and talents, their friendship circles, or family. Someone who will make the narcissist feel good about themselves, through compliments or gestures.
In fact, narcissists are often attracted to strong, confident, and self-assured women. While this may seem counterintuitive, it is important to realize that the narcissistic traits of grandiosity and confidence are really a mask for deep insecurity.
Narcissists can get a lot of narcissistic supply from pretending that they love you. This is because of the negative emotions that they have buried within themselves.
“Deep down, narcissists hope for love and caring”, says Frank Yeomans, “but it often makes them feel very uncomfortable if they seem to find it, partly because they feel vulnerable and doubt the authenticity of any love that comes their way.
Narcissists fall in love quickly because their definition of love is corrupted. They are only capable of infatuated love, which is purely motivated by passion and it is intoxicating, irrational, associated with bad decision making, and usually short lived. This causes their relationships to be fast-paced.
Narcissists' sexual preferences are often very specific. In bed, the narcissist may have very explicit ideas about what their partner should do or even say. They want the narrative to play out in a certain way, and they don't have patience for changes to the script. This has to do with their lack of empathy.
Narcissistic partners usually have difficulty really loving someone else, because they don't truly love themselves. They are so focused on themselves that they cannot really “see” their partner as a separate person. They tend to only see the partner in terms of how they fill their needs (or fail to fill their needs).
They will often deploy a variety of narcissistic relationship patterns such as manipulation, charismatic, and exploitational tactics in order to ensure that their own needs and wants are met. As a spouse, you may be the subject of their manipulation and abuse, while your partner treats everyone else positively.
A key trait of narcissists is confidence – they are attractive because they think of themselves as attractive. They believe in their own value, so this confidence and charisma become qualities that pull others in, that makes them the life and soul of the party.
They get jealous about everything
They talk a good game, but narcissists actually have very low self-esteem. Low self-worth/confidence/esteem is at the core of a narcissism. This low sense of self naturally makes it extremely easy for them to become jealous – very jealous.
Cerebral Narcissists. As discussed earlier, the word somatic relates to the body. Therefore, somatic narcissists are obsessed with their physical appearance and weight, often securing self-worth from their body image. On the other hand, cerebral narcissists gain their sense of value from their intellect.
Narcissists don't know they're hurting you. It doesn't even enter their minds. And, if you try to tell them how you feel, they get defensive and make you feel you're wrong again. In fact, they'll even rather “innocently” tell you: “I'm only trying to help you.”